White House Petition To Make Unlocking Phones Legal Passes 100,000 Signatures

An anonymous reader writes "A White House petition to make unlocking cell phones legal again has passed the 100,000 signature mark. Passing the milestone means the U.S. government has to issue an official response. On January 26th, unlocking a cell phone that is under contract became illegal in the U.S. Just before that went into effect, a petition was started at whitehouse.gov to have the Librarian of Congress revisit that decision. 'It reduces consumer choice, and decreases the resale value of devices that consumers have paid for in full. The Librarian noted that carriers are offering more unlocked phones at present, but the great majority of phones sold are still locked.'"

Comments

2nd story about how cell copmanies suck today.

[F34nor]

Break them up or replace them with a state run monopoly. Discuss.

Re:2nd story about how cell copmanies suck today.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe don't you buy the phone at retail prices? Why would it be locked at all?

A minority does so. Standard practice is to buy the phones under a multi-year contract, heavily discounted. Still, in most countries, the buyer can unlock the phone when he wants for a fee that (at least in some of those countries) decays as the phone ages.

Re:2nd story about how cell copmanies suck today.

[corbettw]

Because state-run monopolies are famous for low prices, excellent customer service, and being at the forefront of technological advance.

Re:2nd story about how cell copmanies suck today.

[keytoe]

Because state-run monopolies are famous for low prices, excellent customer service, and being at the forefront of technological advance.

My utilities board is a 'state run monopoly' and does a fantastic job of keeping prices low, customer service responsive and is constantly looking at new technical ways to save me even more money. They provide incentives to motivate people to adopt higher efficiency heating and insulation, driving overall demand down and reducing the environmental footprint of the entire community. A private company would have no incentive whatsoever to do any of that.

I guess I don't see the advantage to having a corrupt corporation not looking out for me over a corrupt government not looking out for me. I can't change the corporation, but I can at least try to change the government. Both options seem to have roughly the same success rate overall, so why not support the one that gives me a voice?

Re:2nd story about how cell copmanies suck today.

[Solandri]

My opinion is that cellular service, the network/towers, and phones should be mutually exclusive. You buy your own phone, and can activate it on any carrier (supporting similar technology). If the carrier wishes to subsidize phones by giving you a loan for your phone purchase, they can. But you still have to buy the phone elsewhere. That way phone manufacturers compete purely on what their phones can do, regardless of what carrier you end up using it with.

Likewise, the carriers would ink contracts with companies owning towers in a region to put together their own patchwork nationwide network (your phone already does this - it as a preferred roaming list saying which towers it's allowed to talk to). If they're unhappy with the coverage in a region, they can contract for more towers, or drop contracts for one company's towers in preference for another company's towers. That way people don't feel like they have to choose a specific carrier because they have the best physical tower network. And small startup carriers aren't forced to pay big carriers just to have access to towers.

Finally the companies operating the towers would be competing with each other for the carriers as customers. If you put together a crappy tower network, the carriers won't contract with you or will negotiate for lower prices. If you put together a good tower network, they will be beating on the door with money in hand.

The "carrier sells you the phones and owns the towers" was probably a necessary step to get past the chicken and egg stage of no phones and no towers without customers, no customers without phones and towers. But we're beyond that now and need to tweak the market to make it overcome the natural monopolistic tendencies of exclusive phones and towers, so it can operate more efficiently.

We should not need a petition

[betterunixthanunix]

Why is the government protecting a business model that is based on selling equipment at a loss?

Re:We should not need a petition

[gstoddart]

Why is the government protecting a business model that is based on selling equipment at a loss?

In business, it's called a loss leader.

But don't worry, they'll more than make up for it with the price gouging which takes place over the term of your contract.

But, really, this comes down to "do I own the phone or does the phone company". If I own it, I should be able to do anything I want with it. If I don't own it, WTF am I doing paying for it?

Right now companies want to have this mixed model where I pay for it, but they tell me what I can and can't do with it.

Re:We should not need a petition

[F34nor]

It is always cheaper to buy a congressman than to be a better business. Telcos are oligopolies; the worst form of business for the consumers. From that basic cluster fuck all other pain flows.

Re:We should not need a petition

[gstoddart]

Yeah, sure, unless the government doesn't like you, then it's called dumping.

Yeah, but that's only if you're undercutting your competition.

Since the carriers are all doing the same thing, it's more like collusion.

Re:We should not need a petition

[CanHasDIY]

What this petition is doing is asking the White House to get Congress to repeal a law they passed to make the act illegal.

Except, this isn't a law Congress passed - it's a mandate from the Librarian of Congress, who is not an elected legislator.

Hey, maybe that's what we need to make illegal: unelected bureaucrats creating laws by proxy.

Re:We should not need a petition

[LateArthurDent]

In business, it's called a loss leader.

Yeah, sure, unless the government doesn't like you, then it's called dumping.

It's not that arbitrary. It's only dumping if you're not profiting from it. If I sell a bunch of stuff below cost and lose money in process which can only be recovered by raising my prices back up once my competitor is out of business...that's dumping. If I sell something below cost, but that strategy is causing me to actually profit more because it encourages the customers to buy something else from me, that's a loss leader. In the case of the mobile providers, they're causing you to buy into an overpriced contract. The subsidized phones are completely worth it to them.

I don't have a problem with the subsidized phone model. I have a problem with the locked phone model. The contract is already keeping the customer with them for an agreed period of time. If they choose to leave earlier, they'd have to pay a contract cancellation fee in which the provider can recoup the cost of the phone subsidy. There's no valid justification for them to have any control over the hardware once I've purchased it.

Re:We should not need a petition

[HCase]

This is a good question, this is an unusual situation and people seem somewhat confused as to who has done what.

It was decided years ago that cell phone unlocking was illegal under the DMCA. But, as part of the DMCA, there are reviews done by the Librarian of Congress that grant temporary DMCA exemptions for certain activities. Previously, one of the exemptions that the Librarian had granted was to allow people to unlock phones. Unfortunately, the exemption was not extended this year, so legality defaults to the DMCA. The DMCA says no unlocking without permission.

The primary action the petition is for the White House to ask the Librarian review the decision to end the phone unlocking exemption. If this does not work, then the petition asks the White House to push for a bill that would declare unlocking to be legal.

Re:We should not need a petition

[fredprado]

But that is covered by the contract itself. If you don`t fulfill the conditions you pay a fine. There is no logic argument to allow carriers to lock the equipment they sold you. In my country, Brazil, for example it is forbidden to sell locked devices.

Re:We should not need a petition

[InvisiBill]

What this petition is doing is asking the White House to get Congress to repeal a law they passed to make the act illegal.

Except, this isn't a law Congress passed - it's a mandate from the Librarian of Congress, who is not an elected legislator.

Hey, maybe that's what we need to make illegal: unelected bureaucrats creating laws by proxy.

Except, this is a law passed by Congress (the DMCA).

Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of on-line services for copyright infringement by their users.

Per 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1), the LoC is in charge of reviewing related items on a regular schedule and deciding if "fair use" exemptions need to be made. One of these exemptions was made in '06 to cover phone unlocking, and was not renewed this time.

This type of unlocking has been illegal since '98, with an exemption being granted from '06 - '12. It's not that it's suddenly illegal, it's now just no longer not-illegal (again).

Nothing will happen

[MickyTheIdiot]

The Obama administration, no matter how many accusations regarding some sort of "Socialism" get lobbed at it, is a *corporatist* White House. It's only slightly less corporatist than the Bush Jr and Clinton admins.

Nothing will happen. The corporate cheerleaders and know nothings thinks this somehow protects corporations from the great unwashed.

Re:Nothing will happen

[gstoddart]

Why did you feel you needed to bring up ending Don't Ask Don't Tell? How is that even a /civil/ right?

How isn't it?

They wouldn't kick someone out of the military for being black, brown, yellow, or purple ... for being Catholic or Muslim. But for being homosexual? Buh bye before they repealed DADT.

One group of people passing a law saying another group of people shouldn't have a right because they say so is definitely a civil rights issue. Especially since the main objection is on religious grounds, since it uses your religion to discriminate against someone else.

If someone tried to say churches shouldn't be considered charities for tax purposes, there would be a huge amount of whinging their religious freedom is being infringed -- and yet these people are often the first in line to try to limit the rights of others. You should be free to believe what you want, but I don't see why that should give you a tax break for it.

Re:Nothing will happen

[TheSpoom]

I fully expect to see a response written by the CEO of Verizon.

Option 3

[betterunixthanunix]

Create a new amateur license class, that allows individuals to run 4g networks; encourage cooperatives, meshes, and other citizen-run communications systems. Give the spectrum the carriers have to the people and let us manage our communications without relying on monopolies.

Re:Option 3

[Type44Q]

Give the spectrum the carriers have to the people

We already own it - not that that's stopping these sociopathic parasites and their paid liars in Congress from renting it back to us at top dollar...

Re:Option 3

[betterunixthanunix]

can't you already do TTY over amateur radio?

You can get Internet access of amateur radio if you want, there are plenty of people doing digital stuff. Here's the problem: you cannot do any commercial. That means that you cannot even browse Google, since it would transmit advertisements over an amateur band. A secondary issue is that everyone has to be licensed to transmit on amateur bands, and so most people would never be able to use it. Also problematic is the callsign requirement, which would make it much harder to use things like Tor. There are also regulations that make cryptography useless on amateur bands.

The problems with citizen-run communications are mostly regulatory. There are technical issues, but they pale in comparison to the regulations standing in our way.

Re:Option 3

[Alien Being]

I think we need a new reality tv show where, each week, a leading corporate or government scumbag gets dragged into Times Square and bludgeoned by the public at large.

Re:Option 3

[egcagrac0]

That means that you cannot even browse Google, since it would transmit advertisements over an amateur band

Wouldn't that fall under the "pizza rule"?

(Background - it used to be fairly strictly enforced that you couldn't order a pizza over an amateur radio-telephone link (patch or autopatch), since that was a commercial transaction. This got clarified in the 1990's (iirc), where you can't operate an amateur station in furtherance of your own business (can't use it to dispatch taxis, for instance), but you can use it to conduct your own occasional personal business (like ordering a pizza for delivery or arranging to trade, sell, or buy personally owned amateur radio gear (but not a radio dealership advertising sales)).

My vote counts!

[buybuydandavis]

Wheeeeee!

You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[crazyjj]

Oh, you want it unlocked AND dirt cheap....Well, pick one.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[ohnocitizen]

When you buy a phone via a contract, over the term of that contract you pay for the discount (and more). Therefore, even if you purchase a locked phone, after the contract is up it would be fair to allow it to be unlocked. In fact, since breaking a contract and switching companies is always accompanied by a large fee, "dirt cheap" never applies. The only situation in which an unlocked phone would be useful as a current customer is travel. And in that case you are still a current customer, so the phone company is still getting their desired value for the phone.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[crazyjj]

No, what we have now is:

You go to buy a phone
Carrier offers you the unlocked version for $600 or the 2-year contract version for $150
You buy the $150 model
For the next two years you bitch and moan because you can't unlock the phone and switch carriers.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[compro01]

Replace "for the next two years" with "for the next infinity years".

The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA makes it illegal to ever unlock the phone without the carrier's permission, regardless of whether the contract is up or not.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[Anubis IV]

Sure, but just to make sure we're clear on this point, when I sign that two-year contract, I actually bought the phone. I'm required to pay sales tax on the full, unsubsidized price of the phone up front. And if I bought the phone, I should be free to use it how I want. The contract is in place to make sure I don't jump carriers without adequately compensating my current one, and it already suffices. Why we need to add an additional technological roadblock that increases friction between switching carriers is beyond me.

Actually, no, it's not. What the carriers want is to increase friction so that they can lock you in even after your contract is up, so it's no surprise things are this way. But the government stepped in a few years back to help ensure that phone numbers can be transferred between carriers, and they need to do the same here, ensuring that phones themselves can be transferred between carriers, barring any legitimate technological limitations.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[crazyjj]

See, we "bitch and moan" because we bought a phone, and then the government told us we are not allowed to do what we want with the phone.

No, you bought a subsidized phone under a contract. You're free to unlock it as soon as you fulfill that contract, or you're free to buy the unsubsidized/unlocked version in the first place and never enter the fucking contract in the first place.

What you're asking for is to have your cake and eat it too. If you want freedom, BUY THE UNLOCKED PHONE!

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[OzPeter]

This petition is for cheapskates who want to buy subsidized phones, but not fulfill their contract.

There are already mechanisms to penalize people who do not fulfill contracts. So not unlocking a cell phone for that reason is unnecessary.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't see why a phone on contract should be locked. In the UK I could buy a subsidised phone with a contract and move it between carriers as much as I want. Of course I would still be under my contract with the original carrier and have to keep up those payments (or pay an early cancellation fee) regardless of what I do with the phone.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[betterunixthanunix]

Except that you did not take out a loan to buy your phone. You bought it at the price the carrier offered. The law says you cannot unlock the phone regardless of your contract, even when your contract expires, even if you pay the carrier the extra fee to cancel the contract, even if the carrier goes out of business. Stop trying to pretend that people are being offered a fair deal here; a fair deal is one in which you can buy something and do whatever you want with it.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that for all carriers sans T-Mobile, the person who pays the premium for the unlocked phone still has to pay out their ass in the plan costs which are designed to recoup money lost from subsidizing phones by grossly inflating the price.

Once all of the carriers start offering cheaper plans for people who buy their phones outright, then I'll be satisfied.

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[betterunixthanunix]

...and AT&T is the only company that is legally allowed to do that. If I unlocked your phone, it would be a crime. If I told you how to do it, that would be a crime too. No matter how you slice it, AT&T and the other carriers are getting a special, privileged position in the market because of this law (which is what the petition is all about).

Re:You know, you can buy an unlocked phone

[drinkypoo]

Therefore, even if you purchase a locked phone, after the contract is up it would be fair to allow it to be unlocked.

There is no reason why it is fair to have to wait for the contract to be up. The phones should be unlocked automatically by law once you pass the point where you can no longer return the phone for a refund. You are financially obligated to pay for that phone from the moment they get it. They have the right to sue for a judgment against you from the moment you sign the contract and fail to make a payment. You own that phone, and in exchange you agree to give money. If you do not give the money, why does that give them the right to keep your phone locked? It only reasonably gives them the right to seek return of the phone (for a refund, of course) or a judgment against you for the value of the phone, at which point you own the phone outright and they should be forced to unlock it. In exchange for the phone, they own a judgment against you.

Effectiveness of the petitions?

[SirGarlon]

Is anyone tracking how many of these petitions result in actual policy change? It seems most get a canned response explaining the Administration's position. I don't recall any responses that said, "that's a good idea, we'll go do it" or "we've added that to our legislative agenda."

Clarification

[wonkey_monkey]

On January 26th, unlocking a cell phone that is under contract became illegal in the U.S

I don't have a big problem with that, but this is the really important part:

As of January 26, consumers will no longer be able unlock their phones for use on a different network without carrier permission, even after their contract has expired.

Why bother?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Seriously, Obama talks a great game about a transparent government by the people, for the people.

But from what I can tell, the petition website is, at best, a case of him failing to follow through on his aspirations. At worst, it's meant to give the American public a false sense of being listened to.

Re:Why bother?

[10101001 10101001]

No, he's being very transparent about how government works. What better sign of how government will ignore petitions than to setup an official web site to collect them just to ignore them? As for "by the people, for the people", you're just not one of "the people" [that matter] unless you have money and political connections--or can be used for political gain.

So...locks are unnecessary

[Overzeetop]

No, they're selling equipment. After 30 days, it's yours according to the contract - at least it is for the one I signed. I pay for the equipment, and the State agrees that it is a sale at the offered price - charging me sales tax. I have a service agreement which states if I choose not to keep the equipment I have to give it back for a full refund within the first 30 days, after 30 days, I am required to keep the phone.

Nonetheless, you've just made the point that locking/unlocking is unnecessary. I quote, "And early termination fees protect their investment." Which is exactly the point - the contract with my provider states that I will keep in force a minimum level of service for 2 years in return for the reduced purchase price. If I break the contract , I owe them $350 (prorated per the schedule).

Locking is an unnecessary and burdensome business practice which should be illegal, and is instead enforced as a result of a law which was - by it's nature - not intended to apply to physical transactions.

Re:Official Response

[squiggleslash]

Oh really? I guess you missed Obama's announcement yesterday that the Feds are going to build a giant Death Star in orbit around the Earth...

/facepalm

[argStyopa]

What sort of consensual delusion is it that makes people continue to believe the "Whitehouse Petitions" mean SHIT?

Yes, Derek Khanna just mentioned it. Hooray. They hit 100k signatures.

But please: point to a SINGLE THING that the stupid "petition" website has started, stopped, or otherwise changed?*

*except to prompt some White House drone to hit the button 'generate response email': "Thank you for your interest in (issue). Please be assured that the (current president) administration takes your concern, and those of your other petitioners very seriously. President (current president) has reviewed the situation regarding (issue) closely with a team of experts and while you raise important concerns, feels that we should continue on the current policy course. Once again, thanks for your concern, (current president) appreciates your engagement on (issue)."

Phht, and people say that religion is dying. If this isn't a demonstration of naked, unsupported faith, I'm not sure what is.

DMCA shouldn't apply here anyway

[Sloppy]

People should examine how DMCA is involved at all, or why an exemption is needed.

Even if you take a hopelessly naive view of the purpose of DMCA's circumvention prohibition, even if you think it's a good idea to use force against everyone in order to address the 0.0001% case where someone accesses a movie for infringing purposes -- this scenario is still abuse of that law, roughly comparable to the Lexmark ink cartridge case.

On an optical disc containing an encrypted movie, the "work" whose access is limited by a technological measure, is the movie.

On a printer ink cartridge, or a mobile phone, the "work" whose access is limited by a technological measure, is ... hey, waitaminute! It's some kind of weird normally-not-copyrightable thing. Ink, really? Access to a network?! Even if you put all cynicism aside and read DMCA at face value, are you telling me Congress passed that law, for the purpose of granting vertical monopolies to product-tie terminals to networks?! Even if you get more realistic and say DMCA was to product-tie content with players, that purpose still doesn't apply to the phone situation.

The LoC's decision to not exempt phones, was purely malignant and indefensible. But even so, an exemption isn't enough of a correction. DMCA needs to be fixed so that it at least stops being so broad that it's applicable to the phone situation. Propose that to Congress, Mr. President. (Better yet, just toss the circumvention-prohibition crap altogether; if you do that, then everyone (consumers and also copyright holders) will win. But maybe learning the lessons of the last 15 years, is too much to expect this time around.)